Our man in Camelot

He scratched his head doubtfully. 'I don't know… If this is just some sort of foul-up, then we're going to look pretty damn silly… And it has to be a foul-up, because we haven't done anything.'

She looked at him pityingly. 'Mose, this is a foreign country. We don't know what they may do to us.'

'But it isn't a police state,' said Audley.

Mosby stared at him. What was also perfectly obvious was that Audley didn't want any trouble that would make the situation irrevocable. Something had gone wrong somewhere, and badly wrong, but if Schreiner's confidence in their cover wasn't misplaced they still had a fighting chance. Even the fact that Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

these were Special Branch agents was a comfort, because it ruled out what had happened in St Swithun's Churchyard as the source of the trouble: if anyone had witnessed that, then it would have been the local police here now, not the executive arm of British counter-intelligence.

'I'll see you get to a phone when you want to,' said Audley.

'You will?' Mosby mixed relief and gratitude with doubt. 'But if we go with them you're not going to know what happens to us, David.'

For a moment earlier on it had looked as though Audley had been ready to take the wraps off himself, but now he seemed content to play along again. It was almost as if he wasn't really sure yet what to believe.

Audley caught the second SB man's eye for a fraction of a second before answering. 'Not if I come along for the ride.' He gave Mosby a lop-sided smile. 'You didn't think I was intending to abandon you just when things were becoming interesting, did you, Captain Sheldon?'

The clatter of the mower began to diminish.

Mosby walked across the room to the French windows and looked out. It was a big lawn, perhaps nearly a hundred yards of smooth, well-tended grass—the sort of lawn that could only be achieved after a century or two of cutting and rolling and weeding. A slender iron railing divided it from the open parkland beyond, with its self- conscious clumps of beech trees. On the most distant slope, as if deliberately placed to complete an old world landscape, a flock of sheep was scattered across the pasture. Only the man with the guard dog patrolling the railing spoiled the view.

Presumably this was one of the minor stately homes which the British had taxed out of private hands and now maintained for a variety of official and semi-official purposes, publicised and unpublicised. But exactly where it was he had no idea since the glass of the rear windows and partition of the SB car had been artfully distorted so that it was impossible to read the road signs. But as they had travelled at a moderate speed for little more than an hour, and by no means always on busy roads, it could hardly be more than thirty miles in a direct line from the Handforth-Jones house. And the position of the sun indicated that the line lay more or less to the south, which meant they must be on or near Salisbury Plain and not far from where Mosby had actually intended to be this afternoon. Which, in turn, might or might not be significant.

He sighed and turned away from the window. The fine mahogany writing desk in the middle of the panelled room suggested that it was (or had once been) the master's private study, with the double doors to his left leading off into the library. A smart look in that desk would very probably reveal the location of the house, but if it did then they weren't really concerned to keep the secret. Besides, a dumb American Air Force dentist in shock from being picked up by the British FBI ought not to act like an old pro on the look-out for information.

But then, the dumb dentist act was starting to feel uncomfortably like the real thing. Because if something or someone had slipped he had not one single idea what or who.

The sound of the returning mower again began to fog his thoughts. He wondered uneasily where Shirley was. They had put her into the second car, but they had not thereafter driven in convoy. The odds were that she was also in this same house by now, but the damn mower effectively drowned out any sound there might have been of her arrival—

Maybe not quite no ideas. If what Sir Thomas and Tony Handforth-Jones had said was true about Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Audley keeping his wife out of his professional affairs then he hadn't spotted them as American agents straight off. Indeed, it was even possible that he hadn't suspected anything was wrong until the Special Branch men had appeared.

Everything depended on how good Howard Morris's security was. If it was good… then perhaps it wasn't the fact that they were Americans that was bugging the British, but simply their interest in the time-fused Billy Bullitt.

But either way, the show had to go on. Because whatever happened the CIA was never going to admit that they'd ever heard of Captain and Mrs Sheldon, that was for sure after what Schreiner had said. They were absolutely on their own.

The door opened behind him.

'Captain Sheldon—hullo there.'

Tall, dark-haired, good-looking, mid-thirties.

'I'm sorry we've kept you waiting like this, Captain.'

Plus a slight limp and a decidedly upper-class English accent: a very different type from the two Special Branch men and their drivers, unless British police recruitment had changed radically.

'My name's Roskill—Hugh Roskill.'

Mosby ignored the outstretched hand. 'Where's my wife?'

Roskill looked suitably apologetic. 'Quite safe and sound, I assure you, Captain. In fact, they're just rustling her up some lunch at the moment—I gather you both missed out on it. We're sorry about that, too. Can I order you something to keep the wolf from the door?'

The man was different, but the idiom was the same: the British were devilish sorry about the whole beastly business. But one way or another that business was going to be transacted all the same.